The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben spotlights a case that makes it abundantly clear that Canada is soft on crime

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Dangerous offender who sexually abused boys in Niagara region granted unescorted leave from prison with Guest: Joseph Neuberger, Neuberger And Partners Criminal Lawyers, host of the podcast “Not On Record” If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the show everybody. Happy Thursday to everybody listening in Toronto. Really appreciate you joining us here on the Ben Mulroney show. And my goodness from the time we get off the air on a Wednesday to the time we reappear on your radio on Thursday, so much changes because you never know what's going to happen from moment to moment with this new American administration. We know that Donald Trump wants to hurt our economy. He says that we are causing death to the American people due to fentanyl that is

pouring over the border. And recently, yesterday rather, our Prime Minister had a phone call with American President Donald Trump where they discussed a number of issues. Tonda McCharles and Robert Benzie detailed it in the Toronto Star. And it's quite startling stuff. Donald Trump, JD Vance, spoke with our Prime Minister and they said, he said, Canada is killing our people because of fentanyl that is supposedly pouring over the border at crisis levels. Donald Trump is sticking to his guns on this. And I don't know what metrics he's using, what proof he's using, but our prime minister,

according to the report, stood strong and said, our tariffs are not coming off. You know, we are not, we are not budgeting. It was a heated, it was a heated call, but we stuck to our guns. JD Vance demanded Canada halt our counter-terror. I'm sorry that doesn't work like that. If you're gonna hurt us, we have it. We're gonna do what you did. We are gonna defend our people the way you claim to be defending yours.

It's not one rule for us, and one rule for Americans, and another rule for everybody else. It doesn't work that way. We are a sovereign nation and we will we will be defending ourselves as such. Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who is really all all over the airwaves responded. He was on the Trudeau Trump call. And it feels like the president, as somebody said on the Greg Brady show, the administration is negotiating with itself. So we just have to sit back and wait because they are bit by bit peeling away the tariffs that they themselves impose. Let's listen to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. We've got to stop it. It's it's an attack on America and it's got to end.

So the president said, if you do more, I'll listen. He's been listening. He spoke to Justin Trudeau. And so I think he's leaning towards coming up with an idea that allows USMCA, the deal he struck with Mexico and Canada, that's about half of Mexico and Canada. It's about half. Maybe those markets for the next month get excluded from the tariff and the other half. So basically, if you were doing trading with the United States of America and you ignored Donald Trump's agreement that he made years ago, you did it at your own risk.

And so the president's thinking, now he hasn't decided this yet, so it's up to him. Yeah, okay, so he hasn't decided, but then he did decide because White House press secretary confirmed that there is going to be an exemption. There is a one month exemption on those 25% tariffs as it relates to the automotive industry. The president sent me out here with a statement directly from him on this

i saw it was reported earlier today by bloomberg news and he wanted me to share this with all of you we spoke with the big three auto dealers we are going to give a one month exemption on any autos coming through u s m c a reciprocal tariffs will still go into effect on April 2nd, but at the request of the companies associated with USMCA, the president is giving them an exemption for one month so they are not at an economic disadvantage. So the three companies that he spoke to are Stellantis Ford and General Motors. They requested the call, they made the ask and the president

is happy to do it. It's a one month exemption. Yeah, they're all over the map here. I mean, you can't negotiate when somebody keeps changing their perspective. If it's about fentanyl, let's talk about the border. But when you apply tariffs to the automotive industry and remove them, saying you don't want to hurt the automotive industry, tariffs to the automotive industry and remove them saying you don't want to hurt the automotive industry. Explain how that works with your narrative that fentanyl is killing your people. And when JD Vance tweets move your business to America and there are no tariffs, what is this really about? So I said yesterday and I will continue to say this is not about fentanyl, it's not

about the border, this is about the hollowing out of the Canadian economy, and this American administration wants as many jobs and as many companies that currently operate in Canada to roll up their business in Canada and move down to the States. That's what they want. And I believe that they are using the pretext of a fentanyl crisis to justify the application of these tariffs. Don't forget the the in the United States, that is only a power that the American

president can use if he is in a crisis. Tariffs are traditionally the domain the exclusive domain of Congress except in a crisis. So if you call it a crisis you can do this. So he's gonna keep beating the drum of fentanyl. Even though this is an economic move, financial move, pure and simple. But you'll remember when Bonnie Cromby ascended to the position of liberal leader, she made the decision not to run for a seat at Queens Park. I, on day one, said that that was a bad move.

I didn't think that that was the appropriate move from a tactical and strategic point of view for the liberal leader, for the simple fact that leaders belong at Queens Park. They belong in a seat at Queens Park. Leaders want to be seen in that room, in the arena, going toe to toe with the government, holding them to account, asking questions, battling it out in that arena. It's a visual that benefits the leader because only people elected are allowed to be in that room.

elected are allowed to be in that room. People, the only people on the outside who complain or who criticize are journalists and protesters. And Bonnie Cromby is neither. Bonnie Cromby is a special breed. She is the one of few leaders of political parties and therefore should be in that room. So I thought that was a bad move.

Election night comes, Bonnie does not win her seat. Her party moves up to official party status. Congratulations to the Liberal Party of Ontario. But Bonnie is without a seat again. And so she has recently said that she will not ask any of her Ontario Liberals who won just a few days ago to step aside so that she can have a seat. That makes sense to me in the short term because she's looking at 14 seats, I believe. I think she'll be entering the Liberal Party will be entering Queen's Park with 14 seats.

It requires 12 to be an official party. And for her to ask any one of those people hard won liberal seats to step aside so that she can have one of those seats. First of all, there's no guarantee that if that person steps aside, she will win that seat. First of all, I think the Tories would make it very hard. I think they would mount a campaign against her. And so then you're down to 13 seats and your leader is weakened further by demonstrating that she can't win a seat that they had just won a few weeks earlier.

So it's a risk I don't think she should be taking right now. However, there's not much upside right now because for her to wait means you got to wait for somebody to resign or die or there's gonna be a scandal that forces them out. There's very few reasons that somebody would that a seat would would be vacated at this point so early in a new mandate. And so the liberals find themselves in the same position they were before without a leader in the one place that they desperately need one at Queens Park.

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of your Thursday with us. This next story is disturbing. It makes me angry. I'm sure it will make you angry as well. There is a criminal, a disgusting criminal, who preyed on and sexually assaulted at least 11 boys in Niagara region. He was imprisoned indefinitely beginning in 2006.

He deliberately lured, abused and victimized boys between the ages of eight and 14, who are from troubled backgrounds, dysfunctional families in St. Catharines and Welland. He, um, and now he finds himself allowed to live in the community, unescorted for weeks at a time. This is according to the parole board of Canada. So this is a guy who, by the way, was deemed a predator. And it was determined that he was well above average risk to commit more sexual offenses. His risk of recidivism was very high.

And despite that, despite the parole board deeming him a predator, he is now allowed to live unescorted in the place where these crimes were committed for weeks at a time to make sense of this. If one can even make sense of this, I'm joined by somebody who quite literally wrote the book on this, Joseph Neuberger of Neuberger and Partners, criminal lawyers and the host of the podcast, book on this, Joseph Neuberger of Neuberger and Partners Criminal Lawyers and the host of the podcast Not On Record. Joseph, welcome to the show. Please make this make sense.

I don't think I can, Ben. Okay. It's a tough one. So you'll see from the statistics, it's a very small minority of dangerous offenders who are living in the community under supervision or those that are on these temporary absences. So it's a very small group and there are offenders who have been in jail for 20 years and 25 years who in fact have had a much smaller range of offending behavior at an earlier stage in life, thus having a much more longer period of rehabilitation. In this case, this individual, while in custody, had actually indicated that there were many

more victims than he was actually convicted for. He is still at an age, at 54 years of age, where we call it, we talk about burnout, that somebody is still within the offending years. So as you get more into your late 60s 70s and so on there's more of a burnout effect yeah we don't really have that you're too i mean for lack of better expression you're too old to commit the crimes well you get you know you still can at 70 but it depends on their health but you know it's there yeah and as you said very very correctly he's still well above the average for risk of offending.

So these are not good factors to have somebody in the community, whether he's completed these programs or not. And I'm one who believes in these programs. There's very robust, good scientifically-based programs to work with sex offenders offenders and I think that work must go on. Yeah. And there are those that will have mitigation of risk, but this one seems to have a very high profile, too high in my opinion for such extended periods of time in the community. And but this is what I don't get because the Parole Board of Canada would have been the organization that would have allowed this freedom, but they're the ones

who called him a predator. I don't like people deserve to feel safe in the neighborhoods in which they live. I can't imagine if I if I found out that this guy was living in my neighborhood and and I had kids, which and I do have kids of that age, I would be freaking the heck out. And understandably so. Now, there are, you know, restrictions on on this individual and they're they're likely in a fairly structured supervised setting. Whereas it notes he leaves at a certain hour must attend at a certain hour. Often there is electronic monitoring that's in place. And, and the

local police service will know of this. And there is electronic monitoring that's in place and the local police service will know of this and there is regular checks done through the halfway house in order to monitor and there's relapse prevention program, etc. which is going on. But that also is, you know, of not a lot of comfort to individuals who live in the community with children who are riding around on bikes and doing other things. It's very concerning and I understand that. So in this case, you know, it's not the risk profile you would think that somebody would be in the community for extended periods. And he will remain a predator with that designation for a long period of time because his risk profile will

remain high regardless, in my opinion, just given the mere offending and the vast amount of offending that he's admitted to while in therapy. Now, I've heard a lot whenever we have these discussions that, well, the problem is we have a housing shortage within our nation's prisons and we've got to let people out. We've got to come up with reasons to let them out. But if this guy is an apex predator,

then why can't we find somebody who is less of a risk, let that person out and keep this guy in jail? Yeah, so we need to take a good look at, you know, incarceration and how we deal with people who are convicted of an array of offenses. We know what types of sentencing are appropriate. How do we handle that? We need, we need a harder look. And I understand that there's this political debate going on out there about bail reform because we see these extreme cases of high risk offenders who are out on bail committing further offenses, but that doesn't mean you just incarcerate everybody.

No, and I don't wanna keep everybody in prison indefinitely. I think that there are certain people for whom if they show remorse, if they show that they have been rehabilitated, all those things, that they jump through certain hoops, then yes, we let them out because the risk to the public has been significantly diminished. But this person has not demonstrated

that the risk has been diminished. And like for my personal identification and for our listeners, what are the criteria, the traditional criteria, when after conviction, when you're looking at sentencing, what are, I know that, you know, there's an element of punishment, right? You want to punish the person who did something wrong. There's an element of public safety. You want to make sure that the safety, there. What are those? What are those criteria? Okay, let me break down a few things for you one the Supreme Court has been very clear that when it's offenses involving children the primary

Principles of sentencing is denunciation and deterrence. Those are the primary factors Protection of the public and you denounce this abhorrent behavior. Yeah, that's clear of the public and you denounce this abhorrent behavior. That's clear. Then there's specific deterrents as well as general deterrents that we know those principles and then rehabilitation factors in. And when there's a sentencing occurring for somebody who has offended in this way, usually there is some sort of a psychological or psychiatric assessment that has gone on so that you will have some idea of the individual's risk profile. That will be taken into consideration by the court and then once they enter the jail system there's further assessments that are done and then there's a whole

cast of guidelines that have to be followed in order to advance or deal with persons of this nature. So the public should know the Supreme Court has been extremely clear as well as the Ontario Court of Appeal. Offenses against children, denunciation, and deterrence are the primary factors in sentencing. So Joseph, in this case, based on what you just said, would you say that that framework has been followed here? I think they followed the framework. I think they're too lenient with giving such liberty to an

individual who remains a high risk with multiple offenses. So there can be, you know, certainly he's in a minimum facility. That's fine. He's secured. Maybe there could be day passes, but beyond that, an individual with this risk profile, in my opinion, should not be out in the community. Yeah. And that's what I don't get. Like the even the day past, Joseph, like, to what end? Why would we even indulge that as an option? I don't get it. Like...

Well, there can... I understand. There can be a number of factors. One, there are programs to access outside of the jail system that are very helpful and important. There are vocational programs as well as educational programs that you can't access, which does assist with reducing risk and with rehabilitation. I'm just a, I just, uh, what, okay, what, what can the community do at this point? If they, if they now feel like I'm, I have to take action here to protect my family or my community, can they petition the parole board? Is there anything that can be done to reverse rescind this decision? Well, you know, with media attention to the actual decision and obtaining, if possible,

the decision itself, which would be very hard, speaking to your local MP who can then try and put some pressure on politically. But as we've seen with Mr. Bernardo's transfer from maximum to medium little will be done with this because this is an internal system that is supposed to be somewhat independent from government intervention so i think the exposure of this in the media and having a good dialogue about we know what are appropriate circumstances to release an offender, you know, what do we look at and have some experts talk about this, I think we'll get a helpful discourse

to really shine a light on why this is not a good decision. Well, this morning has been, I hope, a step in that direction. Joseph Neuberger of Neuberger and Partners Criminal Lawyers, as well as the host of the podcast Not On Record, really appreciate you coming on the show today. Always a pleasure, Ben. Take care. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. In the last segment, we spoke with Joseph Neuberger, criminal lawyer, to break down what I think is an egregious miscarriage of justice. There is

a guy in jail in prison who was convicted of sexual assault on numerous young boys. He has been deemed to be well above average risk to commit more sexual offenses. The Parole Board of Canada deemed him a predator, and yet he now finds himself able to go out into the community on leave without any sort of supervision for weeks at a time apparently. And so I want to hear from you 416-870-6400, 1-888-225-TALK. What would you do if you found out that there was someone like this walking around free to do whatever they want more or less walking around, free to do whatever they want, more or less, in your community. I'm sorry, but no matter how reformed they think you are, certain crimes should be, they should ban you from certain privileges forever.

And especially if the parole board itself has said you're at a high risk to offend again. This guy's only 54 years old. He has the ability to do this again. He was deemed what they said, well above average risk to commit more sexual offenses. And yet despite that, he's out in the community. 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. I am not the type of person who says,

throw the book at every single criminal and keep them in jail, keep them in prison forever. But there are certain crimes and certain criminals who do not deserve a second chance. They do not because because if you give it to them, they have a proclivity. They have an instinct to do it again. You can't fix them. They are broken. I don't care how much rehab you give them. I am not a bleeding heart on that on that front. My heart bleeds for the

victims and for the community. And you are sending this person out into the community again. chock full of kids chock full of potential victims. Hey, Doug, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Good morning, Ben. My thought is, is on the idea we've heard this going on and on for years, where the parole board quote unquote, makes a decision and it makes the public uneasy. Yeah, I have never come across who is actually on this board, Who are the people? What is the face of the board? And is there any mechanism for their personal accountability to the public

for the decisions that they make? Or are there any extenuating consequences that would happen as a result of them making wrong decisions? Yeah, well that's, you know what, I asked Joseph Neuberger something similar to that and he said the the mechanism by which things like this get reviewed is by forcing these conversations into the public sphere, having these conversations on radio, in the newspaper, on television, in the hopes of putting pressure on the parole board.

But as of right now, there's nothing we can do. I don't know that I would be comfortable living in a world where we named and shamed and blamed individual members of the parole board. I certainly don't want them to, you know what happens when social media gets a hold of somebody's name like that. They then find themselves the target of threats

and living a life that is less safe. I don't wanna contribute to that. But I believe accountability is required in a case like this because innocent people are living their lives in their community, deserve to feel safe and their kids deserve that especially. Let's who do we have? We've got Mike.

Mike, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Good morning, Ben. Good morning. I grew up in a small town and as a kid about 30 years ago, maybe a little more, complained to his father that the principal at school was doing things to him.

And once the father sussed it out very well and was certain of, you know, his son was telling the truth. He paid a visit to the principal in the middle of the night and slipped into his house, beat him with a baseball bat, woke him up and beat him with a baseball bat, went to the police station and turned himself in. And you know, you think like that would be something like the cure for the guy. A couple of years ago, he's up on more charges, recent charges.

Yeah, I mean, there are certain people who are rotten to their core. I don't know what to tell you. I mean, there's certain people who are pure to their core, but it feels to me like the criminal justice system in its current form wants to bend over backwards showing how enlightened it is that we and showing how trusting it is in the goodness of people. And I'm sorry, you deal with the worst of the worst every day. You should be cynical AF.

You should, especially when dealing with a person of this low character who has demonstrated that they are, how perverse, how debased they are, and how criminal and, and, and, and dark their soul is. And then to just say, yeah, you get to go out into the community, more or less unchecked. Yeah, check back in with us every now and then, but look at us, look at us in Canada, how good we are, how moral we are.

Look at what we've done with this guy. He went in through the system, he came out a better person. I don't know he's's a better person. You don't know. He's a better person. You said, you said that he was a predator. You said he was well above average risk to commit more sexual offenses. I don't, I don't understand it. It's like, it's like giving the keys back to a drunk driver before before they've even sobered up like this. This is a is a this is a this is a bad thing willing to happen. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you for joining us. And I'd love to hear from you on tariffs at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK.

You know, something interesting has happened over the past few days. When I heard that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called Doug Ford, the Ontario Premier, to push back on his aggressive stance and his aggressive reaction to these tariffs. I thought that was interesting. I thought, you know, we've been chasing Donald Trump. We've been going down there. We, the Canadian government, the Ontario government, the Alberta government, we've been going down

as Donald Trump has held court, trying to get him to see the error of this way. And for the first time that I've seen, this was the Americans reaching out to a Canadian, trying to get him to temper his reaction. And of course, Doug Ford has been adamant, I am not gonna stop, I will be unrelenting. Nothing's coming off, every tool in my toolbox,

I'm going to use, I don't care if you've carved out the auto industry, I'm gonna be protecting Ontario as much as possible. And so it even seems like the Americans are negotiating against themselves in certain ways, like give them enough time and maybe they'll roll this all back themselves without having to do anything. And I go back to the very first conversation that our prime minister had with the incoming president at Mar-a-Lago, where I believe the conversation went to, you know, what would happen, what would happen, I think Donald Trump said something to Justin Trudeau that elicited

Justin Trudeau saying, you know, if you do this to us, you're going to destroy our economy. And I think Donald Trump had in his head, we have Canada over a barrel. We can do what we want and they are going to take it and give us anything we want. He sensed weakness. He smelled blood in the water. And he was coming for our throats. And I don't think he expected this response. I do not think he expected Canada to be this strong in its resolve, not to say we can inflict

damage that will destroy the American economy, but this is this is guerrilla warfare. They are they are the occupying force and we are, you know, for lack of a better image, we're the Viet Cong, right? We don't have the numbers. We don't have the fighting force, but we are coming at them in sneaky ways. We are, they're a sledgehammer. We are a scalpel.

And I don't think they expected this. And I'd love to hear what you have to say. Do you agree with me? It's a theory I'm operating under right now. 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. John, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Hello, Ben. Lovely to talk to you. I'm sitting here talking to my wife and my lovely community of Oshawa. And, you

know, a few things go across my mind, I've retired, so I got way too much time on my hands. i watch cnn and fox i get all the input from all the different uh... avenues of communication so so i voted i voted for uh... done for it i would close my ice and block my nose and put the x on and i did what i had to do but here's the deal he takes the kentucky bourbon off the shelf so he puts it back in the warehouse me

i would have sold it and then not bought anymore so now it's sitting there doing nothing uh... on fox news they were saying they've got dozens of different uh... uh... contracts they can start up all over the world to get rid of that stuff and then it's this u a w which used to be part of the c a w now it's uniform so the american auto workers are going well why don't we bring the cars back here and then we got a prime minister who had a pipeline deal for a decade never built it now we're selling our oil to the state because we can't sell it to anybody else it's one thing after another after another the final comment I'd like to

make is while we're running around with huff and puff and trying to do it to the Americans an economist was on I think your channel earlier with Greg Brady and basically said it'll be point three 0.4% inflation that we'll get in the long run. Uh, excuse me, we'll get three or 4% inflation in the long run, but the Americans will get less than half a percent. So if Trump loses his mind and decides to go full Monte on this in the long run, we're, we're screwed. So we have to really be careful about talking about cutting off power and

Doing this and doing that because we have to work with these guys and if we get too much into a fight We're gonna lose. Listen. I I agree. This is not this is unsustainable. I think we can all agree. There's there's no long-term Solution here by by counter tariffs and and and and and the. But I think it's about demonstrating in the short term that this was a short sighted move. And the markets, look, the markets tanked on day one and two and they went back up yesterday, but I believe they went back up yesterday on the hope that the automotive tariffs would come off,

which they did. We will see today how the markets are reacting. I have no idea, but let's continue this conversation and say hi to Frank. Good morning, and you know, I didn't think, I don't think the Trump administration expected the poll numbers as communicated nationally on a really popular network,

that 64% of Americans didn't want Trump to impose tariffs on Canada, and 80% of Americans didn't want Trump to impose tariffs on Canada and 80% of the American population doesn't want to increase in inflation. So essentially I think that what the Ford administration is doing is good that eventually through osmosis the numbers are going to speak for themselves in these northern and maybe even mid-central states and that could change the dynamics in the current situation. Yep, I think you're right.

And look, as I said, I was wondering what the stock market was doing this morning. That the stock market is not taking too kindly to this position, down 735 points at this point. That's not a good look for somebody, for an administration that views the stock market and its ascendancy as proof of them doing good work this is the market saying we don't

think this is a good idea Donald. Cam what do you think do you think that Donald Trump underestimated Canada's resolve? Absolutely. Now it's fine. This is Canada's golden time right now. Get representatives over to the EU, rip up the 87 airplanes, fighter jets that we're about to order, or we have ordered, okay, from the United States. Get them over to European, get signed up for the Gripen program, and while we're over there, hey, Canada's open for business with oil and gas. Bring your boats in. Irving, right there on the East Coast, on the West Coast, go to Japan. You wanted our gas and oil, do that deal. You know what, Ben? This is our steel mill should be just humming. Okay? Increase the destroyer fleet. What's

the matter with Canada having two, three, maybe four aircraft carriers? We have three oceans to protect. United States doesn't. Listen, yeah, the potential that we have as a nation, the untapped potential is insane. What we could do as a nation, if we had the political will to do it. I don't believe that the current government

has a view of the world and Canada's role in it to get us there. I think it's going to require a conservative government that sees it is exceptionally bullish on Canada's future as it relates to natural resources, military procurement and the like, you know, cutting red tape, cutting corporate tax, cutting individual tax, personal tax, all that stuff. You want Canada to be the fullest expression of itself, I believe, in just my opinion, not asking anybody else to believe the same, I believe that the way to get there is to jump on board with a conservative majority.

David, David, welcome to the show. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I don't blame the American people. I just named the one man Donald Trump. Yeah. He didn't expect this kind of a response from Canada. And I know that Canada would have never done this to them. So I think he totally stabs us in the back. And we have we have to act. And David, thank you. Thank you for saying that. I've never criticized the American people.

I love the American people. I've spent so much time down there and look forward to doing it again. But when Donald Trump didn't get elected on a promise of tariffing Canada and Mexico, that came after the fact. And even after the fact, when he said he was gonna do it, I was on board to a certain extent

because I believed that he was highlighting a problem that a lot of us have seen, which was an unserious take on border security, a drug policy and so on. And I said, look, if it takes Donald Trump to get us to take those things seriously, I'm on board, thank you, Donald Trump. But now it is very clear that that is not his goal.

It was a pretext to launch a trade war. And I'm not down with that. And I never will be. So in that case, yes, I do believe that every option should be on the table and we should in good faith look at every avenue that we can to safeguard Canada's sovereignty. Gabriel, what do you think of this whole mess? Hi, thanks. It's a good show. Listen, I believe that Trump is doing this because he doesn't want to negotiate with Trudeau. He doesn't want to give him a win. Well, you could argue that he has put wind in the liberal sales by positioning America as an enemy to the United States. Canadian voters, to a certain extent, have responded to that by turning back to the liberals away from the conservatives.

So you could say that he's actually done Justin Trudeau's bidding to a certain extent. I think that cooler heads will prevail and I think people will see the politics that the Liberal Party have been playing with this crisis and they will get their just desserts when ultimately we finally have the right to hold this government to account at the ballot box. But they've been playing keep away with our with our democratic right for a very long time. I don't see them changing tactics until it serves them. Daniel Blanchard is no ordinary thief. His heists are ingenious. His escapes defy belief.

And when he sees the dazzling diamond CC star, he'll risk everything to steal it. His exploits set off an intercontinental manhunt, but how long can CC Star stay lucky for Daniel? I'm Seren Jones, and this is A Most Audacious Heist. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.